Tuesday, January 21, 2020
607 - The Age of the Medici, Part 3, Italy, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Part 3: Leon Battista Alberti: Humanism.
It is only in God that the ultimate science is realized.
So says Leon Battista Alberti, the Christian humanist of Renaissance Florence.
Alberti meditates on great ideas. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers from antiquity to today. The greatest spiritual ideas. Philosophical ideas. Aesthetic ideas. Mathematical ideas. Scientific ideas. Etc. And he fuses those thoughts together.
Alberti and Ciraco enter the Cathedral as the choir sings.
They see the painting of Masaccio. The crucified Christ. The Trinity.
A woman speaks to them. She does not understand the painting. Why does Masaccio give God the same dimensions as humans. Ciraco argues that Masaccio has liberated himself into new forms. Alberti states that he has applied the new science of perspective--principles of geometry.
In this time period it is scandalous to represent certain things artistically in certain ways. But change is coming. The application of science to art.
Science.
Toscanelli has found a way to calculate the circumference of the Earth. According to his calculations, the Earth has a circumference of 28,000 miles. Today we understand it to be 24,901. Toscanelli had to work it out with far less technology. He came close.
Literature.
Niccoli Cusano has acquired a Codex of Sappho's verses from Crete. How? Manuscripts such as this one are rare, hard to come by, and expensive.
Yet Niccoli has a library filled with them. We know, because we are standing in his library.
Niccoli reads.
Some say the most wondrous thing on this black earth,
is an army of horsemen.
Others, instead, of troops.
Yet others, of ships.
But I say, that which one loves.
Cosimo de Medici appears. Niccolo takes him aside to speak in private.
Niccolo wants to borrow 50 florins. Cosimo wants to know why. After all, Niccolo already owes Cosimo so much money. Niccolo says that comforts him. Because 50 more florins is immaterial to what he already owes. Cosimo presses him. Why? Niccolo tells Cosimo about a manuscript he wishes to buy.
Cosimo presses him further. He extracts from Niccolo a list of all the manuscripts he currently wishes to acquire. By the end of it, Cosimo has talked Niccolo into borrowing 620 florins rather than merely 50. For if that is what it takes to acquire all the manuscripts, then that is what he should borrow.
Niccolo thanks Cosimo as Cosimo smiles and leaves. We infer that the debt will never be paid, nor that Cosimo wishes it to be. Through the feigning of credit, he expresses his largesse.
Cosimo is really a Benefactor. A Patron of the Arts.
Cosimo de Medici is the Godfather of 15th-century Florence. He is kind to you, and exceedingly generous, as long as you are loyal to him.
Political Intrigue
The men discuss the Pope. The current Pope. The one to be. The other one. They watch a procession. They discuss the possible outcomes of the next vote. No worries. We will ensure that the right one is elected.
Engineering
Alberti has developed a way to take measurements of the depths of the seas. There is no sounding yet. Alberti describes it. He is given leave to build it right away.
They are motivated because the great ships of Rome lie sunken off the coast, and they wish to retrieve them, to study them, to reverse engineer them. They want to understand everything that made Rome great. To achieve it as well. And to surpass it.
Alberti demonstrates various machines at work For example, a machine for cutting groves in metal to make a file.
Later he shows off his collection of mirrors. Mirrors of all shapes and curvatures, which distort the human face in many different ways.
Architecture
Alberti has written two works on architecture, yet they arise from mathematical theory rather than practical experience. But as much as he has his detractors, which we saw in the previous episode, he has more so supporters, and he is talked into embracing his talent and pursuing his craft to practical advantage.
As Alberti reaches his mature years, he shares his wisdom with Cosmio's grandson, Lorenzo de Medici. It is up to him to continue the tradition begun by his predecessors. Always have money. Always provide for your family. Never leave your offspring in a condition where they have to beg. With money comes opportunity, the opportunity to focus on what is really important. The advancement of civilization built on the acquiring of knowledge.
* * * * *
Do you think that drawing, painting, sculpting statues is possible without assiduous study? I say it is indispensible for every artisan, every sculptor--Donatello for instance--for every painter to try to discover the universal model of reality, which is to say, the model that lives in nature.
The different parts that make up a body have fixed and symmetrical proportional relationships. Discovering the mathematic and geometric rules that govern these relationships means capturing the very essence of the archetype, of the universal model on which nature is based.
How long will you have to work to discover this archetype?
I shall begin immediately to write that which is clear to me about painting and about the sculpture of statues. And then I will seek some more.
Perspective, you say? I do not understand you, but I do not see the magnificence of Christ. I do not see divine power. The artisans have always depicted a glorious, immense, and infinite God in accordance with a holy tradition. But Masaccio has painted the body of Christ like that of a man. There is nothing divine about it. It does not inspire devotion.
But Christ made himself man, and Masaccio looked at his humanity.
He looked at men as the center of human becoming.
What is important to me in looking at that painting is that art and science have met.
Today one cannot be a good artist if one is not also a good scientist.
It is only in God that the ultimate science is realized. Because its infinite simplicity contains within it the multiplicity of things. He is the eternal form in all things, which is the potential that wondrously gives each thing its essence.
God is supremely simple and eternal unity, intelligence, and mysterious perfection, a whole and not a part. He is the cause of everything. He is present in everything that is in the universe. And we can say that man, in his fashion, is a God, but not in absolute terms. Man is a microcosm, and in him lives the world.
The ancient builders, of course, were truly great. But this century has had men so superb and numerous in such a diverse array of arts and doctrines that they can be compared to the ancient masters.
In architecture, in devising devices to transport large weights, in building war machines, I believe that our men have even surpassed the ancients.
I am glad to know that I have been useful to him. That is why I wrote them, why I studied the arts and became an architect.
Rome is great, despite the destruction.
Gold is useless unless you transform it into works for the city, works for men.
I have seen that good must be built up like a building, stone upon stone, just as a city must be built family upon family.
All that we have we owe to the family into which we are born. That is what protects us in spite of the evils of men. And there is no place in the world where care and diligence toward things can be shown than inside a family. It is no small thing to leave one's children riches and knowledge enough so that they will never be obliged to pronounce that bitter phrase: I beg of you.
I have seen that if the world asks men to be slaves, many will do so. But when the world honors genius, then many, many men become geniuses.
When one is intelligent, one can build.
When one is mad, one destroys.
Have you ever wondered why we live in a time of such great innovations, so fervid with ideas, so rich with intelligence? It is because today we honor intelligence.
Acting is only the extension of knowing.
The existence of an immense multitude of men has a reason. Their number is necessary so as to increase a million fold man's ability to understand, his knowledge.
The proper function of the human race, taken in the aggregate, is to actualize continually the entire capacity of the possible intellect.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Monday, January 20, 2020
606 - The Age of the Medici, Part 2, Italy, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Monday, January 20, 2020
606 - The Age of the Medici, Part 2, Italy, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Part 2: The Power of Cosimo.
Every frame a fresco.
Every other frame a tapestry.
Ten months have passed since Cosmo's exile, and the big banks have suffered no losses. In fact, they are doing better than ever.
The Pope has fled Rome for Florence by boat on the Tiber.
Leon Battista Alberti stands before the base, beholding the bronze statue.
David by Donatello.
A revelation. A Judeo-Christian subject designed and cast in a classical sculpture form.
David as a youth. With the shepherd's laurel wreath wrapping his hat, crowning his head. Holding Goliath's sword in his right hand. Standing in triumph on Goliath's severed, helmeted head.
In the nude. In the round. Carved and cast on all sides. To be seen from below.
Alberti stands with the apprentice. Donatello is not in. Alberti remarks that such works are not to be relegated to niches, as mere accents to service architecture. But to stand alone in full glory, in the open for the public to see. All sides. All angles. To see what Donatello has achieved.
The apprentice assures him. The work will indeed stand in the Palazzo. Commissioned by Cosimo himself.
Cosimo. The great banker. The great de Medici. Exiled for ten years. Settled in Venice. But he took his bank with him, and the money flowed out of Florence. To the magnet. The magnate.
Florence needs him. So after only one year of the ten years of exile, Cosimo returns. And the money flows again. And the power.
Back in Florence Cosimo de Medici pays off the debts of powerful men, and in doing so he gains allegiances and consolidates factions, drawing the power back to himself.
Meanwhile, Leon Battista Alberti continues to visit artists and artisans--to the neglect of his job at the curia--to marvel at their art and discuss philosophical ideas. Alberti is himself an artist, a sculptor, an architect, a mathematician, a poet, and an author. He has published two books on how to design buildings, which his detractors claim are based on mere mathematical theory devoid of actual experience.
Alberti visits the architect Pippo Brunelleschi. Cosimo visits Pippo at the same time.
Pippo is competing for the commission to design the dome for the Santa Maria del Fiore. Or at least the lantern that goes on top of the dome.
A man named Ghiberti is competing against him.
Pippo and Alberti show Cosimo a "perspective." An inverse woodcut which, seen through a small hole from the back of the wood, appears in three dimensions in a facing mirror.
Cosimo favors Pippo. He will help him. As if by divine intervention, Pippo wins the commission. But we know that Cosimo is behind it.
This second part of the Medici trilogy, among many made-for-television movies Rossellini filmed near the end of his life with the goal of education in mind, is not at first easy viewing. Instead of actors performing their roles, they speak their roles, explaining through exposition the ideas Rossellini wishes to convey.
Yet the film methodically rewards the patient viewer.
The production values are high. The colors are rich. The information appears well researched and generously delivered.
One can learn some of the minutiae of 15th-century Florentine government, economic, religious, and social life.
We hear a sermon on the nobility of the soul and salvation through faith in Christ.
We engage in a dialectical conversation on the benefits of high Latin versus the Vulgate.
We discover the process of coining florins from gold.
We witness political intrigue as Cosimo stays one step ahead of his enemies.
We ponder the efficacy of grace as a Christian man falsely renounces his faith in order to escape the Turks, and then seeks absolution upon returning home.
Along the way, Rossellini uses Alberti as his mouthpiece to showcase great ideas.
Particularly the usefulness of a universal liberal education for the development of the Renaissance man.
As Alberti maintains, "Each art contains parts of all the others."
And one may naturally draw parallels between this work and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. The devout artist. The casting of the lantern on top of this dome. The casting of the great bell on top of that one. With action occurring in front of the frescoes. The crucified Christ ever standing before our steady gaze.
* * * * *
Alberti - I want to arrive at the Opera del Duomo in time. Today they are choosing the architect for the construction of the lantern on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.
man - You must decide between the curia, sculpture, painting, or architecture. You spend more time in the workshops of the Florentine artisans than you do in the curia working for us.
Alberti - One cannot merely be a member of the curia, or merely a scholar of ancient texts, or merely a sculptor, merely a painter, merely a priest, or merely a merchant. Each art contains parts of all the others, because the arts of man live in the same reality of the world, in which all things, though appearing to be separate, live together with all others, and only together with the others can be known, possessed, and loved. You know that our fathers in Florence were not merely merchants or merely men of letters, merely priests or merely artisans.
Anyone who writes or speaks should aim to be understood. - Leon Battista Alberti
You have made robbery ethical. You have made greed reasonable. And to give nobility to this greed, you explain with scholarly knowledge that florins are a gift from God. You build monuments, churches, domes, statues, sacred frescoes so the world will see you as devout, humble, God-fearing men.
Between philosophy, knowledge, and commerce, one wonders what our world is
coming to.
* * * * *
The men of this century and of this city believe themselves to be the only masters and creators of everything. They seek knowledge in the writings of pagans and forget that living and reasoning are born of the spirit that God has given them. They forget that nobility of spirit is more beautiful than the sun, than the moon, than the stars and the sky, and that none of the things created by God is superior to it, because he created it in his image.
Let man, then, retire to his room and let no one come between him and God himself. Stand before the Lord God and think and think again, and leave every other matter or occupation by the wayside. Because matters of conscience are more important than those of the world. Earning money, providing for your families, protecting yourself from your enemies, all of these things are important.
But saving your soul is more important. The soul, in greatness and virtue, is above water, above fire, above air, above the entire earth, above the moon, Mercury and Venus, above the Sun and Mars, above Jupiter and Saturn, and all the signs among them. The soul is above all 72 constellations.
If there were as many empyreans as there are drops in the sea, as much sand in the desert or stars in the sky, all their beauty taken together could not be compared to the excellence of the human soul. But it is a most miserable thing when it strays from God.
Mothers, do you know who is the most miserable of men? Who is the poorest? A bird is born with feathers, a fish with scales. But man is by nature born naked. The puppy barks, the fish swims, the bird takes flight. Man, when he is born, knows only how to cry. We must all remember that man lives because he is mind incarnate, troubled soul, a container of brief duration, an ephemeral ghost of time. He is born, he scans the road ahead, consumes his life, is always on the move like a wanderer passing through, a guest where he is welcomed, a slave to death.
And where is his salvation? His salvation is in his faith in Christ, which he fulfills by being true to himself, to his family, to his city.
As for the faith that is our salvation, as an example I will tell you an ancient story. A man had left his young son under an oak tree, guarded by a dog called Bonino. Upon returning from the fields, he found his son dead, with his throat bitten, and next to the body was the trembling dog. In a fit of rage, the man killed the dog with an ax, and only then did he realize that under its belly the dog held in its paws a horrible snake, a snake it had killed to defend his son. In tears, the man regretted his ire and buried the dog with a stone on which he inscribed this saying: "Here lies Bonino, faithful champion to the end, killed by the ire of an unjust man."
The years went by and the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem became accustomed to stopping to pray over this tomb, thinking it the resting place of a champion of their faith. One day, a man afflicted with a serious illness, after having prayed, was healed. Others prayed, and the miracles continued to multiply. The men of the area then erected a chapel in order to give a more seemly burial to the body of the man they considered a saint. But when they devoutly opened the tomb to move the bones, they saw that they were the bones of a dog and were scandalized.
An old and saintly monk then comforted them with these words: "Where there is faith, even by means of a dog, God can perform miracles and exhort men to repent. In prayer, our soul calls out to God, and God answers the soul and gives it what it needs without giving weight to the words themselves."
606 - The Age of the Medici, Part 2, Italy, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Part 2: The Power of Cosimo.
Every frame a fresco.
Every other frame a tapestry.
Ten months have passed since Cosmo's exile, and the big banks have suffered no losses. In fact, they are doing better than ever.
The Pope has fled Rome for Florence by boat on the Tiber.
Leon Battista Alberti stands before the base, beholding the bronze statue.
David by Donatello.
A revelation. A Judeo-Christian subject designed and cast in a classical sculpture form.
David as a youth. With the shepherd's laurel wreath wrapping his hat, crowning his head. Holding Goliath's sword in his right hand. Standing in triumph on Goliath's severed, helmeted head.
In the nude. In the round. Carved and cast on all sides. To be seen from below.
Alberti stands with the apprentice. Donatello is not in. Alberti remarks that such works are not to be relegated to niches, as mere accents to service architecture. But to stand alone in full glory, in the open for the public to see. All sides. All angles. To see what Donatello has achieved.
The apprentice assures him. The work will indeed stand in the Palazzo. Commissioned by Cosimo himself.
Cosimo. The great banker. The great de Medici. Exiled for ten years. Settled in Venice. But he took his bank with him, and the money flowed out of Florence. To the magnet. The magnate.
Florence needs him. So after only one year of the ten years of exile, Cosimo returns. And the money flows again. And the power.
Back in Florence Cosimo de Medici pays off the debts of powerful men, and in doing so he gains allegiances and consolidates factions, drawing the power back to himself.
Meanwhile, Leon Battista Alberti continues to visit artists and artisans--to the neglect of his job at the curia--to marvel at their art and discuss philosophical ideas. Alberti is himself an artist, a sculptor, an architect, a mathematician, a poet, and an author. He has published two books on how to design buildings, which his detractors claim are based on mere mathematical theory devoid of actual experience.
Alberti visits the architect Pippo Brunelleschi. Cosimo visits Pippo at the same time.
Pippo is competing for the commission to design the dome for the Santa Maria del Fiore. Or at least the lantern that goes on top of the dome.
A man named Ghiberti is competing against him.
Pippo and Alberti show Cosimo a "perspective." An inverse woodcut which, seen through a small hole from the back of the wood, appears in three dimensions in a facing mirror.
Cosimo favors Pippo. He will help him. As if by divine intervention, Pippo wins the commission. But we know that Cosimo is behind it.
This second part of the Medici trilogy, among many made-for-television movies Rossellini filmed near the end of his life with the goal of education in mind, is not at first easy viewing. Instead of actors performing their roles, they speak their roles, explaining through exposition the ideas Rossellini wishes to convey.
Yet the film methodically rewards the patient viewer.
The production values are high. The colors are rich. The information appears well researched and generously delivered.
One can learn some of the minutiae of 15th-century Florentine government, economic, religious, and social life.
We hear a sermon on the nobility of the soul and salvation through faith in Christ.
We engage in a dialectical conversation on the benefits of high Latin versus the Vulgate.
We discover the process of coining florins from gold.
We witness political intrigue as Cosimo stays one step ahead of his enemies.
We ponder the efficacy of grace as a Christian man falsely renounces his faith in order to escape the Turks, and then seeks absolution upon returning home.
Along the way, Rossellini uses Alberti as his mouthpiece to showcase great ideas.
Particularly the usefulness of a universal liberal education for the development of the Renaissance man.
As Alberti maintains, "Each art contains parts of all the others."
And one may naturally draw parallels between this work and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. The devout artist. The casting of the lantern on top of this dome. The casting of the great bell on top of that one. With action occurring in front of the frescoes. The crucified Christ ever standing before our steady gaze.
* * * * *
Alberti - I want to arrive at the Opera del Duomo in time. Today they are choosing the architect for the construction of the lantern on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.
man - You must decide between the curia, sculpture, painting, or architecture. You spend more time in the workshops of the Florentine artisans than you do in the curia working for us.
Alberti - One cannot merely be a member of the curia, or merely a scholar of ancient texts, or merely a sculptor, merely a painter, merely a priest, or merely a merchant. Each art contains parts of all the others, because the arts of man live in the same reality of the world, in which all things, though appearing to be separate, live together with all others, and only together with the others can be known, possessed, and loved. You know that our fathers in Florence were not merely merchants or merely men of letters, merely priests or merely artisans.
Anyone who writes or speaks should aim to be understood. - Leon Battista Alberti
You have made robbery ethical. You have made greed reasonable. And to give nobility to this greed, you explain with scholarly knowledge that florins are a gift from God. You build monuments, churches, domes, statues, sacred frescoes so the world will see you as devout, humble, God-fearing men.
Between philosophy, knowledge, and commerce, one wonders what our world is
coming to.
* * * * *
The men of this century and of this city believe themselves to be the only masters and creators of everything. They seek knowledge in the writings of pagans and forget that living and reasoning are born of the spirit that God has given them. They forget that nobility of spirit is more beautiful than the sun, than the moon, than the stars and the sky, and that none of the things created by God is superior to it, because he created it in his image.
Let man, then, retire to his room and let no one come between him and God himself. Stand before the Lord God and think and think again, and leave every other matter or occupation by the wayside. Because matters of conscience are more important than those of the world. Earning money, providing for your families, protecting yourself from your enemies, all of these things are important.
But saving your soul is more important. The soul, in greatness and virtue, is above water, above fire, above air, above the entire earth, above the moon, Mercury and Venus, above the Sun and Mars, above Jupiter and Saturn, and all the signs among them. The soul is above all 72 constellations.
If there were as many empyreans as there are drops in the sea, as much sand in the desert or stars in the sky, all their beauty taken together could not be compared to the excellence of the human soul. But it is a most miserable thing when it strays from God.
Mothers, do you know who is the most miserable of men? Who is the poorest? A bird is born with feathers, a fish with scales. But man is by nature born naked. The puppy barks, the fish swims, the bird takes flight. Man, when he is born, knows only how to cry. We must all remember that man lives because he is mind incarnate, troubled soul, a container of brief duration, an ephemeral ghost of time. He is born, he scans the road ahead, consumes his life, is always on the move like a wanderer passing through, a guest where he is welcomed, a slave to death.
And where is his salvation? His salvation is in his faith in Christ, which he fulfills by being true to himself, to his family, to his city.
As for the faith that is our salvation, as an example I will tell you an ancient story. A man had left his young son under an oak tree, guarded by a dog called Bonino. Upon returning from the fields, he found his son dead, with his throat bitten, and next to the body was the trembling dog. In a fit of rage, the man killed the dog with an ax, and only then did he realize that under its belly the dog held in its paws a horrible snake, a snake it had killed to defend his son. In tears, the man regretted his ire and buried the dog with a stone on which he inscribed this saying: "Here lies Bonino, faithful champion to the end, killed by the ire of an unjust man."
The years went by and the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem became accustomed to stopping to pray over this tomb, thinking it the resting place of a champion of their faith. One day, a man afflicted with a serious illness, after having prayed, was healed. Others prayed, and the miracles continued to multiply. The men of the area then erected a chapel in order to give a more seemly burial to the body of the man they considered a saint. But when they devoutly opened the tomb to move the bones, they saw that they were the bones of a dog and were scandalized.
An old and saintly monk then comforted them with these words: "Where there is faith, even by means of a dog, God can perform miracles and exhort men to repent. In prayer, our soul calls out to God, and God answers the soul and gives it what it needs without giving weight to the words themselves."
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